He went into the ground yesterday.

I remember because it was raining and the worms wriggled on the street

So they wouldn’t drown

I saw them when we were waking to the gates.

He was waiting for us beyond those gates.

Where else could he be?

Not like he could just get up and walk away.

Because he doesn’t walk anymore

He doesn’t run down the riverbanks with us anymore

Or watch old cartoons on the dilapidated couch with us

Or jokingly complain about how bad the roast was burned, while everyone laughs

He can’t do that anymore, you know.

But he used to.

He’d do it a lot, and it was nice.

Anyway, I don’t remember much about the funeral details.

And that‘s probably a good thing.

I wasn’t really paying any attention, but you were so I don’t need to tell you.

I looked at the ground, trying not to listen to that stupid eulogy.

He hated that stupid funeral. I know he did.

I know his eyes were closed, and he couldn’t say anything about it…

But I know he hated it.

So I looked at the ground instead.

There was a toad not far from the isle-

Flattened in the grass as rain bounced off it’s dry cadaver

And then I looked up again and hated what I saw.

People who he never knew and never knew him were screaming to the sky and crying their eyes out.

That was dumb.

They never knew him at all.

Almost no one did.

They might as well have been weeping for the toad.

After all, there’s a good chance one of their feet crushed the life out of it in the first place.

But nobody cried for the toad.

Toad’s don’t matter.

Perfect strangers matter.

I remember before they put him in

Everyone coming around and staring at his body like he was some stupid museum exibit.

Some talked to him.

Right.

If he didn’t want to hear their mindless chatter when he was alive

Why the hell would he want to now?

I saw him before he went under.

But I didn’t say anything.

I just got a last look and silently apologized that he got such a crappy goodbye

And for the time I broke his favorite CD

He never knew I did it, I supposed now was as good a time as any

I think he’s glad I did it.

Apologizing for the funeral, I mean.

Then they all went back to his house

(Just who the hell told them they could touch his stuff anyway? Not him, that’s for sure)

And they talked about him a bit

But they mostly talked about the other one.

The one they said was the blame of all this.

How she deceived him

How she used him.

How she “broke his heart”

How she led him on, then cast him off

And how that was what made him be underground now.

It’s not true- not really.

I mean- she didn’t really mean for it to happen.

She wasn’t bad or anything.

He told them that. He told them constantly.

But they didn’t listen then and aren’t listening now.

Even though he’s screaming at the top of his dead lungs

Under the flattened toad and drowning worms

And they still don’t listen.

All they do is point out with coldhearted criticism that

If she weren’t so bad, she’d be here now, crying with them.

Which is the stupidest thing I ever heard.

If they knew anything they’d know why they didn’t see her.

I do.

Besides, she was there, only hiding somewhere.

I don’t know where.

I didn’t see her, but I know she was there.

I came out of the rain and tombstones later that day

(To say to the toad I was sorry he got crushed under high-heals. Someone had to.)

And I saw her sitting atop his tombstone and looking down

Like she was looking through the soil and rain-soaked grass and disgustingly flashy box they stuffed him in

Like she was looking right at him.

Knowing her, she probably was.

She sat there for hours.

She never said a thing.

She didn’t cry

She didn’t pound her fist on the ground and scream at the gods

She didn’t scream at him for being stupid enough to kill himself like that

Her body didn’t convulse and shudder with sobs.

That was for the others.

She wasn’t the others, that’s what he liked about her.

And what I like too.

I know she had something to say to him, though.

I know she didn’t want to be around him

Or really, even anything to do with him anymore

But I knew she didn’t want him to got- not like that.

There must have been a million things she wanted to say.

But she sat in silence.

Because she was doing the one thing he asked for his whole life

The one thing he ever wanted from anyone

The one thing nobody would give him.

She sat on the tombstone and listened to what he had to say.

When I left the graveyard, she was still listening.

I know she wants to say things to him too

Like everyone else

But unlike the others

But first she is going to wait her turn first